Saudi Arabia: New terrorism law is latest tool

Saudi Arabia: New
terrorism law is latest tool to crush peaceful
expression

A new counter-terrorism law in Saudi
Arabia will entrench existing patterns of human rights
violations and serve as a further tool to suppress peaceful
political dissent, Amnesty International said after
analysing the legislation.

The Law for the Crimes of
Terrorism and its Financing, which took effect on 1
February, uses an overly vague definition of terrorism,
gives the Ministry of Interior broad new powers and
legalizes a range of ongoing human rights violations against
detainees.

“This disturbing new law confirms our worst
fears – that the Saudi Arabian authorities are seeking
legal cover to entrench their ability to crack down on
peaceful dissent and silence human rights defenders,” said
Said Boumedouha, Middle East and North Africa Programme
Deputy Director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty
International’s fears about this law are not recent. In
2011, the organization detailed its concerns about a leaked
draft of the legislation, which highlighted the negative
human rights impact such a law would have.

In a series of
subsequent communications with the organization, the Saudi
Arabian authorities sought to allay fears the law would be
used to clamp down on legitimate dissent by saying it was
still only a draft.

“Passing a law with so many serious
flaws two years after identical issues with the earlier
draft were pointed out does not bode well for the
authorities’ plans to end long-standing violations in the
name of counter-terrorism. The changes made to the law since
2011 have done little to diminish the potentially
devastating impact on human rights. The legislation just
seems to codify the Ministry of Interior’s repressive
tactics, which Amnesty International has documented for
years,” said Said Boumedouha.

The definition of
terrorist crimes used in the new law is overly vague and
could be abused by the authorities to crack down on peaceful
dissent. Among the offences labelled terrorism are any acts
that directly or indirectly aim at “disturbing the public
order of the state”, “destabilizing the security of
society, or the stability of the state”, “endangering
its national unity”, “revoking the basic law of
governance or any of its articles”, or “harming the
reputation of the state or its standing”.

Similar
charges were used against almost all Saudi Arabian human
rights defenders and civil society activists arrested and
prosecuted in 2013. Amnesty International fears that such a
broad definition allows the prosecution of any form of
peaceful human rights activism as a terrorist crime
punishable by law to long prison terms and even to death as
the new law considers terrorism a most serious crime.

The
new law also grants the Ministry of Interior wide powers
with little or no judicial oversight. This includes the
ability to order searches, seizures, arrests and detentions
of suspects, with virtual impunity.

Article 6 of the law
states that suspects can be held for 90 days with no contact
with the outside world beyond a single phone call to their
family. This includes not having access to a lawyer during
interrogations.

The law also allows the Ministry of
Interior to hold terror suspects without charge or trial for
six months – renewable to a year – without the ability
to appeal the decision. Indefinite detention in excess of a
year is also allowed by the Specialized Criminal Court,
which operates in secrecy.

“Legalizing prolonged
incommunicado detention and blocking timely judicial
challenges to detention is a recipe for systematic torture
and other ill-treatment in custody,” said Said Boumedouha.

Background

The enactment of the Law
for the Crimes of Terrorism and its Financing, coming within
months of Saudi Arabia’s Universal Periodic Review and its
ascendancy to a seat on the United Nation’s Human Rights
Council, shows utter disregard for international human right
law and the UN mechanisms put in place for its
protection.

There has been a marked deterioration in Saudi
Arabia’s human rights situation in recent months. During
2013 Amnesty International documented dozens of cases of
activists sentenced by security and criminal courts to long
prison terms and travel bans. The authorities forced the few
independent human rights NGOs to shut down, with their
members facing lengthy prison sentences, often after grossly
unfair trials.

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